TWI717677B - User equipments and methods for performing a cell measurement - Google Patents

Abstract

A User Equipment (UE) including a wireless transceiver and a controller is provided. The wireless transceiver performs wireless transmission and reception to and from a service network. The controller receives a measurement configuration and a Discontinuous Reception (DRX) configuration from the service network via the wireless transceiver, extends a measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration, and performs a cell measurement via the wireless transceiver in the extended measurement period.

Description

User equipment and method for performing cell measurement

The present invention is related to wireless communication, and particularly refers to a device and method for performing cell measurement.

With the growth of demand for ubiquitous computing and networking, various wireless technologies have been developed, including Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technology, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) technology, Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) technology, Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) technology, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 2000 technology , Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) technology, Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE) ) Technology, Time-Division LTE (TD-LTE) technology and upgraded LTE (LTE-Advanced, LTE-A) technology, etc.

The above-mentioned wireless technologies have been adopted in various telecommunication standards to provide public agreements, which can enable different wireless devices to communicate at the municipal, national, regional, and even global levels. An example of an emerging telecommunications standard is the 5th Generation (5G) New Radio (NR). 5G NR is a series of enhancements to the LTE mobile standard released by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). 5G NR is designed to better support mobile broadband Internet access by improving spectrum efficiency, reducing costs, and improving services.

For 5G NR user equipment (User Equipment, UE), there are two operations that require the UE to frequently turn on and turn off the wireless transceiver. The above operations may include Discontinuous Reception (DRX) operations and cell measurement for radio resource management (Radio Resource Management, RRM). In particular, the cell measurement can be configured via a synchronization signal block (Synchronization Signal Block, SSB)-based RRM measurement timing configuration (SSB-based RRM Measurement Timing Configuration, SMTC). In other words, cell measurement can be performed by measuring the signal quality of the SSB. Due to the fact that the SSB is a broadcast signal and the DRX configuration is specific to the UE, it is almost impossible to align the measurement timing (Measurement Occasion, MO) with the DRX on (ON) timing for each UE. Therefore, the misalignment of MO and DRX ON timings may seriously increase the power consumption of the UE.

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention proposes an apparatus and method for performing cell measurement. The UE extends the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration (such as SMTC), where the measurement configuration is received from the serving network, thus allowing the UE to hop in the extended measurement period. Pass one or more MOs. Advantageously, the power consumption of the UE can be effectively reduced.

An aspect of the present invention provides a UE, wherein the UE includes a wireless transceiver and a controller. The wireless transceiver is configured to transmit wirelessly to the service network and receive wirelessly from the service network. The controller is configured to receive the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration from the service network via the wireless transceiver, extend the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration, and perform cell measurement via the wireless transceiver in the extended measurement period.

Another aspect of the present invention provides a method for performing cell measurement. The method is performed by a UE, and the UE includes a wireless transceiver. The method includes the steps of: receiving a measurement configuration and a DRX configuration from a service network via a wireless transceiver; extending a measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration; and performing cell measurement via the wireless transceiver during the extended measurement period.

By reading the following description of specific embodiments of UEs and methods for performing cell measurement, other aspects and features of the present invention may become apparent to those with ordinary knowledge in the field.

The following description is intended to illustrate the general principle of the present invention, and should not be regarded as limiting. It can be understood that these embodiments can be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or a combination thereof. When the words "include", "include", "include" and/or "have" are used in the present invention, it means that the stated features, integers, steps, operations, elements and/or components exist, but do not exclude the existence or Add one or more other features, integers, steps, operations, elements, components, and/or combinations thereof.

Figure 1 is a block diagram of a wireless communication environment according to an embodiment of the invention.

As shown in Figure 1, the wireless communication environment 100 can include a UE 110 and a service network 120, where the UE 110 can wirelessly connect to the service network 120 to obtain mobile services, and perform cell measurements on the cells of the service network 120 .

The UE 110 may be a feature phone, a smart phone, a panel personal computer (Personal Computer, PC), a notebook computer, or any wireless communication device that supports the wireless technology (such as 5G NR technology) adopted by the service network 120. In another embodiment, UE 110 may support more than one wireless technology. For example, the UE may support 5G NR technology and traditional Forth Generation (4G) technology (such as LTE/LTE-A/TD-LTE technology).

The service network 120 may include an access network (access network) 121 and a core network (core network) 122. The access network 121 is responsible for processing radio signals, terminating the radio protocol, and connecting the UE 110 and the core network 122. The core network 122 is responsible for performing mobility management, network-side authentication (authentication), and interfacing with public/external networks (such as the Internet). Each of the access network 121 and the core network 122 may include one or more network nodes to perform the aforementioned functions.

In an embodiment, the service network 120 may be a 5G NR network, the access network 121 may be a radio access network (Radio Access Network, RAN), and the core network 122 may be a next-generation core network (Next Generation Core Network, NG-CN).

RAN can include one or more cellular stations, such as Next Generation NodeB (gNB), where gNB can support high frequency bands (such as above 24 GHz), and each gNB can also include one or more There are two transmission reception points (Transmission Reception Point, TRP), where each gNB or TRP can be called a 5G cellular station. Some gNB functions can be scattered on different TRPs, while other functions can be centralized, leaving specific deployment flexibility and scope to meet the needs of specific situations.

A 5G cell station may use different component carriers (Component Carrier, CC) to form one or more cells to provide mobile services to the UE 110. For example, UE 110 may camp on one or more cells formed by one or more gNBs or TRPs. The cell where UE 110 camps may be called a serving cell, and the serving cell may include a primary cell (Pcell). ) And one or more secondary cells (Secondary Cell, Scell).

NG-CN generally consists of various network functions, among which network functions include access and mobility functions (Access and Mobility Function, AMF), session management functions (Session Management Function, SMF), and policy control functions (Policy Control Function, PCF), Application Function (AF), Authentication Server Function (Authentication Server Function, AUSF), User Plane Function (UPF), and User Data Management (UDM), among which each network The path function can be implemented as a network component on dedicated hardware, or as a software instance running on dedicated hardware, or as instantiated on an appropriate platform (such as cloud infrastructure) Virtualization function implementation.

AMF can provide UE-based authentication, authorization, and mobility management. The SMF may be responsible for session management and allocate (allocate) Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to the UE. SMF can also select and control UPF for data transfer. If the UE has multiple sessions, different SMFs can be assigned to each session to manage each session separately, and possibly provide different functions for each session. AF can provide information about packet flow to PCF to support Quality of Service (QoS), and PCF can be responsible for policy control. Based on the above information, the PCF can determine policies related to mobility and session management to make AMF and SMF operate appropriately. AUSF can store data used for UE authentication, and UDM can store UE subscription data.

In another embodiment, the service network 120 may be an LTE/LTE-A/TD-LTE network, and the access network 121 may be an evolved-universal terrestrial radio access network (Evolved-Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network, E-UTRAN), the core network 122 may be an evolved packet core (Evolved Packet Core, EPC).

E-UTRAN may include at least one cellular station, such as an evolved NodeB (eNB) (such as a macro eNB, a femto eNB, or a pico eNB). Each can form a cell to provide mobile services to UE 110. For example, the UE 110 may camp on one or more cells formed by one or more eNBs, where the cell where the UE 110 resides may be called a serving cell, and the serving cell includes a Pcell and one or more Scells.

EPC can include Home Subscriber Server (HSS), Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (S-GW) and Packet Data Network (Packet Data Network). Gateway, PDN-GW or P-GW).

It can be understood that the wireless communication environment 100 described in the embodiment of FIG. 1 is only for illustrative purposes and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. For example, the wireless communication environment 100 may include a 5G NR network and a traditional network (such as an LTE/LTE-A/TD-LTE network or a WCDMA network), and the UE 110 can wirelessly connect to the 5G NR network and the traditional network. Road both.

Fig. 2 is a block diagram illustrating UE 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 2, the UE 110 may include a wireless transceiver 10, a controller 20, a storage device 30, a display device 40, and an input/output (Input/Output, I/O) device 50.

The wireless transceiver 10 is configured to wirelessly transmit to and receive wirelessly from a cell, where the cell is formed by one or more cell stations of the access network 121. In particular, the wireless transceiver 10 may include a radio frequency (RF) device 11, a baseband processing device 12, and an antenna 13, where the antenna 13 may include one or more antennas for beamforming. The baseband processing device 12 is configured to perform baseband signal processing and control communication between a subscriber identity card (not shown) and the RF device 11. The baseband processing equipment 12 may include a plurality of hardware components to perform baseband signal processing, including analog-to-digital conversion (ADC)/digital-to-analog conversion (DAC), gain adjustment (Gain adjusting), modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, etc. The RF device 11 can receive RF wireless signals via the antenna 13 and convert the received RF wireless signals into baseband signals, where the baseband signals are processed by the baseband processing device 12, or receive baseband signals from the baseband processing device 12, and The received baseband signal is converted into an RF wireless signal, where the RF wireless signal is then transmitted via the antenna 13. The RF device 11 may also include a plurality of hardware devices to perform radio frequency conversion. For example, the RF device 11 may include a mixer to multiply the baseband signal and a carrier that oscillates in the radio frequency of the supported cellular technology. According to the wireless technology used, the above The radio frequency can be any radio frequency used in 5G NR technology (such as 30 GHz~300 GHz for millimeter wave (mmWave)), or it can be 900 MHz used in LTE/LTE-A/TD-LTE technology , 2100 MHz or 2.6 GHz, or another radio frequency.

The controller 20 may be a general-purpose processor, a microcontroller (Micro Control Unit, MCU), an application processor, a digital signal processor (DSP), a graphics processor (Graphics Processing Unit, GPU), or a holographic processor. (Holographic Processing Unit, HPU) or Neural Processing Unit (NPU), etc. The controller 20 may include various circuits to provide the following functions: data processing and calculation, control of the wireless transceiver 10 and the cellular access network 121 The cell formed by the station performs wireless communication, stores data (such as program codes) in the storage device 30 and retrieves data from the storage device 30, and sends a series of frame data (such as text) to the display device 40 Information, graphics, images, etc.), and receive user input or output signals via the I/O device 50.

In particular, the controller 20 coordinates the operations of the wireless transceiver 10, the storage device 30, the display device 40, and the I/O device 50 to perform a method for performing cell measurement.

In another embodiment, the controller 20 may be incorporated into the baseband processing device 12 to serve as a baseband processor.

As understood by those with ordinary knowledge in the art, the circuit of the controller 20 may generally include a transistor. According to the functions and operations described in the present invention, the transistor is configured to control the operation of the circuit. As further understood, the specific structure or interconnection of transistors can generally be determined by a compiler (compiler), such as a register transfer language (Register Transfer Language, RTL) compiler. The RTL compiler can be operated by a processor on a script that is very similar to assembly language code to compile the above script into a form that can be used for layout or manufacturing final circuits. In fact, RTL is widely known for its role in facilitating the design process of electronic and digital systems.

The storage device 30 may be a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium, where the storage medium includes memory (such as flash memory or non-volatile random access memory (Non-Volatile Random Access Memory, NVRAM)) , Or magnetic storage device (such as hard disk or tape), or optical disk, or any combination thereof for storing data (such as measurement configuration, DRX configuration and/or measurement results), instructions and/or application code, communication protocol And/or method of performing cell measurement.

The display device 40 may be a liquid crystal display (Liquid-Crystal Display, LCD), a light-emitting diode (Light-Emitting Diode, LED) display, an organic light-emitting diode (Organic LED, OLED) display, or an electronic paper display (Electronic Paper Display). , EPD) and so on to provide display functions. Alternatively, the display device 40 may also include one or more touch sensors disposed on or under it to sense the touch, contact, or touch of an object (such as a finger or styluses). Close.

The I/O device 50 may include one or more buttons, a keyboard, a mouse, a touchpad, a camera, a microphone, and/or a speaker, etc., as a Man-Machine Interface (MMI) for interacting with the user. ).

It can be understood that the components described in the embodiment in FIG. 2 are only for illustrative purposes and are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. For example, UE 110 may contain more components, such as a power supply and/or Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment, where the power supply may be a mobile/replaceable battery that powers all other components of UE 110, GPS The device can provide location information of the UE 110 for use by some location-based services or applications. Alternatively, UE 110 may contain fewer components. For example, the UE 110 may not include the display device 40 and/or the I/O device 50.

Figure 3 is a flowchart illustrating a method for performing cell measurement according to an embodiment of the present invention.

In this embodiment, the method of performing cell measurement may be performed by a UE (such as UE 110), where the UE includes a wireless transceiver (such as wireless transceiver 10).

First, the UE receives the measurement configuration and DRX configuration from the service network via the wireless transceiver (step S310).

In particular, the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration may be included in a radio resource control (Radio Resource Control, RRC) message (such as an RRC connection establishment message or an RRC connection reconfiguration message), where the RRC message can be sent to the UE by the service network.

In an embodiment, the service network may be a 5G NR network, and the measurement configuration may be SMTC. SMTC can include MO (or "measurement window") offset, MO duration (or "SMTC period"), and MO period.

The DRX configuration may include information for configuring the DRX ON duration and DRX cycle (DRX cycle). Because the information contained in the DRX configuration is not within the scope of the present invention, and can refer to the 3GPP Technical Specification (TS) 38.331 version 15 (Release 15, R15), the details of the above information can be omitted in the present invention description. Please note that the 3GPP specifications mentioned in the present invention are used to explain the spirit of the present invention, and the present invention is not limited thereto.

Then, the UE determines whether the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are aligned in time (step S320).

In an embodiment, the UE may determine the time difference between the start point of the MO and the end point of the DRX ON opportunity before the MO (as shown in Figure 4A), or the end point of the MO and the end point after the MO according to the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration. The time difference between the starting point of the DRX ON timing (as shown in Figure 4B). If the time difference is greater than a predetermined threshold (such as a time slot in a 5G NR network), it can be determined that the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are not aligned in time. Otherwise, if the time difference is less than or equal to the predetermined threshold, it may be determined that the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are aligned in time. Or, if the time difference is less than or equal to a predetermined threshold, the UE can repeat the same check on one or several upcoming MO and DRX ON occasions. If each of these check results shows that the time difference is less than or equal to the predetermined threshold, Then it can be determined that the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are aligned in time.

In another embodiment, the predetermined threshold may be set to zero, so that the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are always determined to be misaligned in time (that is, the method flow always adopts the "No" branch of step S320).

After step S320, if the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are not aligned in time, the UE may extend the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration (step S330), and perform cell measurement via the wireless transceiver in the extended measurement period (step S340) ), the method can end.

In an embodiment, the service network may be a 5G NR network, and the cell measurement can be configured via SMTC received from the 5G NR network to measure the signal quality of the SSB broadcast by the cell of the 5G NR network (such as a reference signal) Received Power (Reference Signal Receiving Power, RSRP), Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Reference Signal Received Quality (RSRQ), or Signal to Interference plus Noise (Signal to Interference plus Noise) Ratio, SINR)).

Cell measurement can refer to intra-frequency measurement (i.e., measurement on a cell within one or more frequencies) and/or inter-frequency measurement (i.e., measurement on one or more inter-frequency cells) in the 5G NR network. measuring). In particular, cell measurement may include obtaining measurement results and reporting the measurement results to the service network.

In an embodiment, the extended measurement period may be linearly scaled from the measurement period. For example, suppose N*max (SMTC period, DRX cycle) is the measurement period, and M*max (SMTC period, DRX cycle) is the extended measurement period. Then when DRX is used and the DRX cycle is less than or equal to 320ms, M can be equal to 1.5* N, where N can refer to the number of measurement samples required.

In another embodiment, the extended measurement period may be the sum of the measurement period and an integer (ie, M=N+x, where x is an integer).

Please note that by extending the measurement period, the wireless transceiver can be allowed to skip one or more MOs to save power consumption. That is, for those MOs that are skipped, the wireless transceiver can remain in a low-power mode, where wireless transceiving operations are not required or performed.

In an embodiment, the UE may determine skippable MOs. Each skippable MO has a first time difference and a second time difference. The first time difference is between the start of the MO and the end of the DRX ON opportunity before the MO , The second time difference is between the end of the MO and the start of the DRX ON opportunity after the MO, where the first time difference and the second time difference are both greater than a predetermined threshold. Otherwise, if any one of the first time difference and the second time difference is less than or equal to the predetermined threshold, the MO may not be skipped.

Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram illustrating the determination of MOs that can be skipped in an extended measurement period according to an embodiment of the present invention.

As shown in Figure 5, the measurement period can include 5 MOs (denoted as MO-1 to MO-5), and the extended measurement period can include 6 MOs (denoted as MO-1 to MO-6).

Traditionally, the UE needs to perform cell measurement in all measurement occasions MO-1 to MO-5 in the measurement period. In other words, the UE needs to collect 5 measurement samples from the time period T. In contrast, in the present invention, the UE can collect 5 measurement samples from the time period T', and therefore can skip one MO from MO-1 to MO-6 to save power consumption.

In this embodiment, because one of the time difference between MO-1 and the previous DRX ON opportunity and the time difference between the next DRX ON opportunity (denoted as d1) is less than a predetermined threshold (such as 5G NR network A time slot in), so the measurement occasion MO-1 can not be skipped. Because the time difference between MO-2 and the previous DRX ON timing (denoted as d2) and the time difference between MO-2 and the next DRX ON timing (denoted as d3) are both greater than the predetermined threshold, the measurement timing MO can be skipped -2. Because one of the time difference between MO-3 and the previous DRX ON timing and the time difference between the next DRX ON timing (denoted as d4) is less than a predetermined threshold, the measurement timing MO-3 may not be skipped. Because one of the time difference between MO-4 and the previous DRX ON timing (denoted as d5) and the time difference with the next DRX ON timing is less than a predetermined threshold, the measurement timing MO-4 may not be skipped. Because one of the time difference between MO-5 and the previous DRX ON timing (denoted as d6) and the time difference with the next DRX ON timing is less than a predetermined threshold, the measurement timing MO-5 may not be skipped. Because one of the time difference between MO-6 and the previous DRX ON timing (denoted as d7) and the time difference with the next DRX ON timing is less than a predetermined threshold, the measurement timing MO-6 may not be skipped.

Referring back to FIG. 3, after step S320, if the measurement configuration and the DRX configuration are aligned in time, the UE does not extend the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration (step S350), and performs the cell via the wireless transceiver in the measurement period Measure (step S360), and the method can end.

In view of the above embodiments, it can be understood that the present invention proposes that the UE extends the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration (such as SMTC), where the measurement configuration is received from the service network. By extending the measurement period, the UE can be allowed to skip one or more MOs in the extended measurement period, thus allowing the UE's radio transceiver to maintain a low power mode in the skipped MO. Advantageously, the power consumption of the UE can be effectively reduced.

Although the present invention has been described in an exemplary manner based on preferred embodiments, it is understood that the present invention is not limited thereto. Those with ordinary knowledge in the field can still make various changes and modifications without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should be defined and protected by the scope of the attached patent application and its equivalents.

The ordinal numbers used in the scope of the patent application to modify the elements of the scope of the patent application (such as "first", "second", etc.) do not in themselves imply that an element of the patent scope is relative to another element of the patent scope or Any priority, preference, or order relative to the time sequence of the actions of the execution method, but only used as a label to distinguish one element of the patent application with a specific name from another element with the same name (except for the use of ordinal numbers), To distinguish the elements of the scope of patent application.

100‧‧‧Environment 110‧‧‧UE120,121,122‧‧‧Network 10‧‧‧Wireless transceiver 11,12,30,40,50‧‧‧Device 13‧‧‧antenna 20‧‧‧controller S310-S360‧‧‧Step

The present invention can be understood more fully by reading the following specific embodiments and examples with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a block diagram of a wireless communication environment according to an embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 2 is a block diagram illustrating UE 110 according to an embodiment of the present invention. Figure 3 is a flowchart illustrating a method for performing cell measurement according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 4A is a schematic diagram illustrating the time difference between the MO and the DRX ON timing before the MO. FIG. 4B is a schematic diagram illustrating the time difference between the MO and the DRX ON timing after the MO. Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram illustrating the determination of MOs that can be skipped in an extended measurement period according to an example of the present invention.

S310-S360: steps

Claims (10)

A user equipment for performing cell measurement includes: a wireless transceiver configured to wirelessly transmit to a service network and wirelessly receive from the service network; and a controller configured to pass through the The wireless transceiver receives a measurement configuration and a discontinuous reception configuration from the service network, extends a measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration, and executes the wireless transceiver in an extended measurement period Cell measurement. The user equipment described in claim 1, wherein, during the cell measurement period, the wireless transceiver is allowed to skip one or more measurement occasions. According to the user equipment described in claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to determine the measurement timing to be skipped, and each of the measurement timings to be skipped has a first time difference and a first time difference. Two time differences, the first time difference is between the start point of a corresponding measurement timing and the end point of a discontinuous reception opening timing before the corresponding measurement timing, and the second time difference is within the range of the corresponding measurement timing Between the end point and the starting point of a discontinuous reception opening opportunity after the corresponding measurement opportunity, wherein the first time difference and the second time difference are greater than a predetermined threshold. The user equipment described in item 3 of the scope of patent application, wherein the predetermined threshold is set to zero. The user equipment described in claim 1, wherein the measurement configuration is a radio resource management based on synchronization signal block Measurement timing configuration. The user equipment according to claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to determine whether the measurement configuration and the discontinuous reception configuration are aligned in time, and execute the measurement period The extension is in response to that the measurement configuration and the discontinuous reception configuration are not aligned in time. According to the user equipment described in claim 6, wherein the controller is further configured not to extend the measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration in response to the measurement configuration and the discontinuous reception The configuration is aligned in time. According to the user equipment described in item 6 of the scope of patent application, wherein the controller is further configured to determine the starting point of a measurement opportunity and before the measurement opportunity according to the measurement configuration and the discontinuous reception configuration A time difference between the end points of a discontinuous reception opening opportunity, or a time difference between the end point of the measurement opportunity and the starting point of a discontinuous reception opening opportunity after the measurement opportunity; determine the measurement configuration And the discontinuous reception configuration is not aligned in time to respond that the time difference is greater than a predetermined threshold; and it is determined that the measurement configuration and the discontinuous reception configuration are aligned in time to respond that the time difference is less than or equal to the The predetermined threshold. The user equipment described in item 8 of the scope of patent application, wherein the predetermined threshold is set to zero. A method for performing cell measurement is executed by a user equipment, the user equipment includes a wireless transceiver, and the method includes: Receiving a measurement configuration and a discontinuous reception configuration from a service network via the wireless transceiver; extending a measurement period indicated by the measurement configuration; and performing via the wireless transceiver in an extended measurement period The cell measurement.

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